The Codex Atlanticus consists of
1119 sheets and was donated in 1637 to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana,
founded by Cardinal Federico Borromeo in 1609 and one of the first
public libraries in the world. Basically Leonardo’s entire life as an
artist and a scientist appears in this extraordinary collection, which
covers a time frame that goes from 1478, when Leonardo was still working
in his native Tuscany, to 1519, when he died in France. The folios deal
with various subjects ranging from mechanics to hydraulics, from
studies and sketches for paintings to mathematics and astronomy, from
philosophical meditations to fables, all the way to curious inventions
such as parachutes, war machineries and hydraulic pumps.
In his will Leonardo donated his
writings to his loyal disciple Francesco Melzi who followed the master
to France during the years he spent at the court of King Francis I.
Melzi was very aware of the inestimable
value of this legacy and of the the enormous trust that his Master put
in him and he jealously kept the folios in his villa in Vaprio D’Adda
near Milan, until his death in 1570. Unfortunately, his descendants did
not prove equally zealous and let the huge heritage become prey of
unscrupulous art dealers.
At the end of the sixteenth century the
sculptor Pompeo Leoni managed to retrieve some of Leonardo’s folios from
Melzi’s heirs, and set out to mount them onto large sheets, used at the
time for making atlases: that’s why the Codex would be named from then
on “Atlanticus”. Leoni did not follow a precise ordering criteria
though, privileging the overall aesthetic effect of the volume and
creating a collection destined more for an admiring audience than for
scholars.
The Codex was then sold by one of
Leoni’s heirs to Marquis Galeazzo Arconati, who understood its real
value and in 1637 decided to donate it to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana,
which would be able to ensure the Codex’conservation and transmission to
future generations in virtue of its mission, devoted to culture and
study.
Such a treasure, however, did not escape
to the experts who drafted the list of the works to be transferred to
Paris after the conquest of Milan by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1796. For 17
years it was kept in the Louvre Museum and then in 1815, when the
Congress of Vienna ratified the return of all artworks stolen by
Napoleon to their countries of origin, it was given back to the
Ambrosiana, where it is still jealously conserved.
A curious anecdote tells that the
commissioner engaged by the Austrian Empire (under which Lombardy fell)
to reclaim their artworks was an elderly baron, almost ignorant of
science and art. He was about to leave the entire Codex Atlaticus in
Paris as he had mistaken it for a manuscript in Chinese, because of the
Master’s well-known reversed handwriting. It was Antonio Canova, the
commissioner for the Pope, who realized the mistake and firmly asked him
to bring the Codex back to the Ambrosiana.
In 1968 the Codex underwent an
impressive restoration work at the monastery of Grottaferrata in Lazio,
during which it was bound in 12 massive volumes while maintaining the
original sequence ofsheets set by Leoni. This choice led to many
problems of conservation and study, since in order to make comparative
analysis of the folios it was necessary to consult more volumes at once,
or to consider drawings placed in very different points of the same
tome.
In 2008 the “Collegio dei Dottori”
chaired by the Prefect Monsignor Franco Buzzi, in cooperation with the
“Cardinale Federico Borromeo Foundation“, decided to solve this serious
difficulties and to start anepoch – making disassembling of the 12
volumes of the Codex. Each sheet has then been positioned within
“passe-partouts” cases, designed specifically to ensure the best
conservation and to facilitate their exhibition at the same time.
From September 2009 until 2015, the year
of the EXPO, the sheets will be displayed in different themes and
rotated every 3 months. With the aim of creating an ideal tour of the
most important works of this great Master still remaining in Milan, two
exclusive venues were chosen: the Bramante Sacristy, jewel of
Renaissance architecture, and the ancient Federiciana Room of the
Biblioteca Ambrosiana, open to the public for this exceptional occasion.
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